Crawdaddy! Rock Criticism
Music has always been a big part of my life. My first concert was back in 1970, at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernadino: Jimi Hendrix headlining, with Ballin’ Jack, and Grin (featuring a young Nils Lofgren) leading off. Like many of my musical adventures, I was with my brother Gary, and it was, in the vernacular of the time, a mind blowing experience. Like, outtasight, man. One of the few incidents I can recall quite clearly from my high school days. No hypnotic trance necessary!
Aside from the fact that I didn’t wear shoes to the concert, that the concert promoters sold too many tickets, and so there were many unfortunate fans who were locked out of the concert, and hence proceeded to riot outside the auditorium, and the cops showed up, and started firing tear gas to quell the crowd, and the fans started throwing bottles, and so after the concert ended, we walk out the doors into a nightmarish scene of police, protesters, broken glass, and stinging tear gas, and so my feet got cut up and the gas made me sneeze like crazy - I mean, I’m sneezing uncontrollably, thinking, “This is tear gas for chrissakes, how come I’m not crying? Why am I sneezing?”, well aside from that it was a great concert.
I’m thankful not only for Jimi’s guitar wizardry and songwriting prowess, including cool, moody make out songs from Electric Ladyland, but also (kinda morbid, I know) because he died on September 18th, hence burned into my memory, which happened to coincide with my mom’s birthday, so I was forever after able to remember when to call her up on the right day and say happy b-day. I actually told her that, and she smiled and nodded understandingly. I miss my mom.
Also back in the day existed the first American magazine of rock criticism Crawdaddy, which has now resurfaced on the web HERE, with new webzines coming out each Wednesday. I vaguely remember reading some of the original mags, but can’t recall an emotional or intellectual response. Reading it now however, I would say it plays a nice role in the rock scene. Welcome back, Craw.
mk
Aside from the fact that I didn’t wear shoes to the concert, that the concert promoters sold too many tickets, and so there were many unfortunate fans who were locked out of the concert, and hence proceeded to riot outside the auditorium, and the cops showed up, and started firing tear gas to quell the crowd, and the fans started throwing bottles, and so after the concert ended, we walk out the doors into a nightmarish scene of police, protesters, broken glass, and stinging tear gas, and so my feet got cut up and the gas made me sneeze like crazy - I mean, I’m sneezing uncontrollably, thinking, “This is tear gas for chrissakes, how come I’m not crying? Why am I sneezing?”, well aside from that it was a great concert.
I’m thankful not only for Jimi’s guitar wizardry and songwriting prowess, including cool, moody make out songs from Electric Ladyland, but also (kinda morbid, I know) because he died on September 18th, hence burned into my memory, which happened to coincide with my mom’s birthday, so I was forever after able to remember when to call her up on the right day and say happy b-day. I actually told her that, and she smiled and nodded understandingly. I miss my mom.
Also back in the day existed the first American magazine of rock criticism Crawdaddy, which has now resurfaced on the web HERE, with new webzines coming out each Wednesday. I vaguely remember reading some of the original mags, but can’t recall an emotional or intellectual response. Reading it now however, I would say it plays a nice role in the rock scene. Welcome back, Craw.
mk
posted by Mike King at 7:49 PM
1 Comments:
Nice story. Thanks for the link.
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